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Topic: Game Mechanics Questions (Read 2333 times)

I bought the game, have been playing non stop for a day or two - love it! But can't seem to do well. There are some mechanics I want to have clarified:

Scavenging: A) Within a lottery guy’s “search circle”, if he/she has rooms that are partially in the circle but are not lit, nothing is searched from those rooms, right? Conversely, if you can "light up" a room within the circle, even if 40% of that room is outside the circle, then all the room contents are searched through as if you had 100% coverage of the room, or no? B) Does the "search" skill increase the speed at which a set number of items are found, or does it change the total number of items found in that room? Ie, if you have guy A (great searcher) & guy B (noob searcher) – are the room contents fixed so that guy A will find all room contents faster than B, who can get the same result but takes longer to do it, or will guy A find much more stuff than guy B because guy A’s higher search skill increases the pool of items to find?C) How useful is overlapping search coverage – if 3 guys are searching the same room, will they find more stuff in that room, or will they “max out” and find everything, so perhaps 1 guy could have done it, and the other 2 guys’ efforts were wasted?D) Why do some rescued survivors start moving to you right away at the beginning of the mission from a far distance, while others stay put even though you are literally next door and have him within your search radius? Must your guy “pass through” the room with the rescued survivor in order to trigger him using search, or must he actually be assigned to search in that room? Of course, anyone within “guard” radius automatically comes to you. But is the guard radius a moving target – ie, anyone who comes in contact with the radius will be triggered and move to you, or does only the final assigned position of the guarding guy matter?E) Can you list out various locations/rooms and their expected contents? Also, can you ONLY find fuel in certain rooms, for example, and not others (no fuel in the tea room ever) – or is it that the percentages are just lower (0.01% in the tea room for fuel and 50% chance in fuel storage)?F) What does “guard” do other than pull in survivors? Can you use it to defend against the fog and Fearless? If so, how does that work – can you use guard to get your searchers more time to search?G) How much can the estimated mission time vary – Ie, if you start at 2 min 21 seconds (est), what is the lowest number it could realistically be (ie, 2 min 10 seconds???) Once the time ends, all survivors not in the start zone die automatically?H) The game says you can turn off the engines and go to battery power to extend mission time. How do you do this? I’ve never seen the battery indicator go down – I only see the settings of high/med/low/off on the power bar. If you set the power bar to off, wouldn’t your survivors all die?I) Can you list out all the VIP bonuses, or are those all in the custom game section already?

Comments:A) Purges suck – I think the idea of people being too happy so they turn homicidal makes the game too hard. I found a VIP with the hauling bonus! Then before I could assign him to a safe carriage with food and the works, he was killed overnight the same day he was found. Revolt is fine if you do a bad job, but creating make-work to keep people from being too happy seems contrived. Ought to be a grace period to integrate new survivors – you don’t rescue people then kill them off immediately!

B) There isn’t enough food for 67 survivors now, let alone 150, nor enough power for more than 6-7 full cars (I have Power III already). I’m contemplating airlocking all the useless eaters (ie, the students, sales guys, lawyers, etc). Is this scarcity by design? There isn’t enough food/space to save everyone, and most of them are useless (only about 25% are useful for building defenses/upgrading/scavenging/leading) - C) Save button needed – save scumming isn’t necessary, but this game makes it way too easy to die.

Bugs Noted:A) In some radio calls, it will say something like many survivors at a gas station at XXXX, but the notes show up in the grocery store location (there is no gas station at that location).B) During purges, the number of people in the carriages don’t add up sometimes – ie 15 sympathizers, only 2 people in the carriage, etc. Think it’s a counting issue where numbers are not dynamically adjusting, maybe due to the people being transferred around the carriages.C) Sometimes game freezes for no reason.

A few bugs, but overall, I like this game a lot. Worth it - but really really hard!

Hello there. Thanks for the feedback - glad you're loving the game so far.

First up, please check out the latest patch. It has a range of fixes and tweaks, several of which have been mentioned here (purges are now less frequent, food and fuel have been increased, plus other tweaks).

Regarding your questions about scavenging:

a) That's correct - the rooms that are lit by the circle will be searched, no matter how much it is covered.b) The search skill increases both the radius and the search speed. Generally, a good searcher will find more (and in more rooms) in a shorter amount of time than a poor searcher.c) If you have very poor searchers or you're pretty sure there's a bunch of stuff in a room, overlapping search circles can help. Otherwise, it's best to split them up.d) This is a bug (fixed in latest patch)e) We don't have a list of rooms and possible items. Sometimes radio broadcasts will mention a room, otherwise you can often infer what might be found based on room typef) Guarding attracts survivors and protects any other survivors in the guard radius from fog or fearless attacksg) Estimated mission time for each survivor is usually the minimum, but the actual duration may be higher. Take note of the duration compared to the estimate and see what kind of buffer you might want to addh) That's correct - if you turn off the engine, you get more time. However, you need to pull the throttle to the off position at the front of the train before you sit down at the computeri) There is no list, but the modifiers on the Custom Game screen should give you an idea as to what VIPs might have